Possibilities and limits of social ascension through war: the trajectory of “a soldier who for more than 50 years served with dedication and loyalty to the homeland and the monarch” (Cruz Alta/RS, c. 1840-1867)

Abstract

During the nineteenth century, in the extreme south of the Empire of Brazil, frequent wars allowed for the updating of the Portuguese Anciant Regime tradition of rewarding subjects for good military service. The objective of this article is to follow the transformations of this practice throughout the middle decades of the nineteenth century. We have chosen to analyze the trajectory of a character whose life was marked by war activities. Inspired by Italian micro-history, the study takes a name as a compass in the archives, compiling a variety of documents of diverse origin in order to reconstitute contexts in which the studied character effectively presented himself. The article analyzes in detail evidence of the strategies that made possible episodes of social ascension of the biographee, as well as possible limits of these strategies, evidenced by situations of ostracism he experienced. The trajectory that emerges, therefore, departs from assumptions of linearity, highlighting the interdependence between individuals in the networks of reciprocity they established and the daily negotiations they undertook in the face of social structures that conditioned, but did not determine, their actions and the meanings they attributed to them.